Irritable Bowel Syndrome Dietary Therapy
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Colon Bacteria in the IBS Patient
We, in medicine, are in a new era regarding what we know about the colon and its inhabitants. What we have known for a long while is that the density and numbers of bacteria within the human colon are greater than any other place in the animal kingdom or, in fact, any place in the world. There are more bacteria within the colon by a factor of 10 than there are cells in the entire body. This is amazing! There is likely a reason and, yes, a good healthy reason for this. We have always thought that there were around 400-500 different species of colon bacteria. We were wrong. The number just discovered in 2007 is closer to 1,000 different species.A key and likely a very important fact, again just discovered in 2007, is that IBS patients have a significantly different colon bacterial makeup than those people without IBS. This has been a startling finding but, thinking it through, it should not have come as a great surprise. Bacteria flourish in the colon and they provide huge numbers of benefits for us. They rely on the foods we eat and what we used to call waste products for their health. However, in some way they may be a problem as well. Can changing the bacterial makeup of the colon change the symptoms in IBS patients? This is a key question. A recent research study showed that a certain probiotic formula may reduce the symptoms of cramping and bloating in some IBS patients. We will await more research on what these interesting findings mean for the IBS patients.
